Bond Behaviour of Steel Reinforcing Bars Embedded in Ultra-High-Performance Steel Fiber Reinforced Concrete

Ultra-High-Performance Steel Fiber Reinforced Concrete (UHP-SFRC) is an emerging concrete considered as an optimal, durable material that can substitute conventional concrete owing to its distinct fresh and hardened properties. Thus, it is essential to understand the mechanism of stress transfer between this concrete and conventional reinforcement that permits the composite action of both materials. A four-point bending test program (FPBT) was arranged and conducted on 19 beams designed for the bond development to occur in the constant moment region along a short embedment length in order to achieve a uniform distribution of bond stresses, enabling measurement of bond strength through reverse engineering of beam strength and deformation. Additional material testing was conducted on prisms under 4-point loading in order to extract the mechanical properties for all material mixes considered. The bond-specimens failed either by pullout or by cone formation with minimal deterioration of the concrete cover, illustrating the high confinement provided by the novel concrete surrounding the bar in tension. The bond strength was determined to be directly proportional to the tensile strength capacity of the design mix, where for the strongest material the bond strength was approximately 30 MPa. Moreover, the test results indicated a very ductile flexural beam response accompanied by significant mid-span deflection reaching 27 mm and substantial bar-slip values attaining 19 mm. Different UHP-SFRC mixes, concrete covers, and embedment lengths were considered. A numerical model was developed to simulate the FPBT using a nonlinear finite element analysis platform, VecTor2, with the ability to model this novel concrete. This high bond strength provided by the concrete cover enables a significant reduction in the design development length as compared to what is used today for conventional concrete.